Essays and Lectures

by Oscar Wilde

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Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Classics, Philosophy, Collections, 19th Century, Humor

124 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1879

About the author

Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.
Wilde tried his hand at various literary activities: he wrote a play, published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on "The English Renaissance" in art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he lectured on his American travels and wrote reviews for various periodicals. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Wilde returned to drama, writing Salome (1891) in French while in Paris, but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Undiscouraged, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.
At the height of his fame and success, while An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) were still being performed in London, Wilde issued a civil writ against John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel hearings unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and criminal prosecution for gross indecency with other males. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and so a retrial was ordered. In the second trial Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his last year in prison he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in abridged form in 1905), a long letter that discusses his spiritual journey through his trials and is a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On the day of his release, he caught the overnight steamer to France, never to return to Britain or Ireland. In France and Italy, he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.

Reviews

[christine ♡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't believe that there were people fortunate enough to listen to a lecture taught by Oscar Wilde and I can't believe that there were people blessed to be in the same room as him. Mind blowing.
My love for Oscar Wilde is infinite and I aspire one day to be just a little bit like him. Read this book and read every single book written by him. If you haven't read "The House Of Judgement" do it ASAP. I don't want to talk a lot because his life and works speak for themselves.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 4 out of 5]

One .of the nice things about being a Kindle owner is the ability to add unlikely pieces by well-known writers for little or no money. In this case we are offered Essays and Lectures by Oscar Wilde. Listing, as of review date: free. If you're an Oscar Wilde fan this is a great way to take possession of items not usually thought about when building an Oscar Wilde collection.

There are seven selections in this book amounting to about 200 pages of reading. Oscar Wilde topics include the history of historical criticism, the pre-Raphaelite movement, several different perspectives on art especially decorative art, a curious piece on the then new institution of artist's models and finally three or four so-called "poems in prose". If you are used to the witticisms and clever wordplay of Lady Windermere's Fan or The Importance of Being Earnest, you may find these readings rather dry. For me the poems in prose were somewhat fun. I found it best to not read the essays to intensely.

This is not a very long book. Its proper audience is fans of Oscar Wilde willing to see him in a different light. His essay and lectures style is very much the essay and lectures style of his time. It is not so much about documenting opinion as, dramatizing it. Oscar Wilde is an intelligent and thoughtful man but given to too many generalities and universal statements. "All art..." or "all artists..." and so forth without any thought that there might be another opinion or another possibility.

Technical note: This e edition includes about 22 footnotes. The system for clicking on the number to read the footnote was not operational.

Bottom line Oscar Wilde Essays and Lectures is worth what I paid. Oscar Wilde fans may appreciate Oscar Wilde the lecturer, and would be essayists can benefit from studying intelligent period writing.

[Titus Hjelm · Rating 1 out of 5]

I liked the socialism essay and some others by Wilde, but this was tough going. Some of the lectures had interesting aphorism-like ideas, but the Greek stuff was simply boring. Great expectations killed this for me.

[Anna Kravchuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know. It's Oscar Wilde, with all his crispiness, delicacy, precision of words and thoughts, not restricted by any kind of plot, just following his own interests. If you love him, you love him.

[LeeAnn · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a pedantic tone to these lectures that grates the nerves a bit. Surprising because his fiction reads so differently.

[Dayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

A perfect redemption book.

[dilay · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 or 3 stars im really not sure. if i agreed with one thing i disagreed with four in return

[Joan Sebastián Araujo Arenas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tal y como el título indica, se trata de una serie de ensayos, artículos y recensiones sobre temas variados. La primera parte, conformada justamente por los ensayos, corresponde a los mismos que se hallan en su obra Intenciones (1891), es decir, los siguientes:

I) El crítico artista:

«La influencia del crítico reside en el mero hecho de existir. Significará el “arquetipo” perfecto. La cultura del siglo tendrá conciencia de sí misma en él. No tiene otra finalidad que la de su propia perfección. [...] El crítico, ciertamente, puede sentir deseo de imponerse; pero si es así, no tratará al individuo, sino a la época, a la que intentará despertar a la conciencia, conmoverla, creando nuevos deseos y ansias (p. 88 de esta misma edición)»

II) La decadencia de la mentira: En este diálogo los hijos del propio Wilde son los protagonistas. Personalmente es mi preferido, tanto en estilo como en contenido, y, si no recuerdo mal, aquello de que la vida imita al arte más que el arte a la vida está entre estas páginas. Wilde no defiende aquí la mentira común, aquella que se usa con los niños o con las parejas, se refiere a la mentira en calidad de arte, siendo éste principalmente la literatura.

III) Pluma, lápiz y veneno: Lo más cercano a una biografía que...

El resto de la reseña se encuentra en mi blog: https://jsaaopinionpersonal.wordpress...

[Julia P · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Shakespeare one was the best.

[Rao Javed]

Could not end maybe sometime else